Printer ink is one of the most expensive substances known to humanity, so ignore the printer and start with the ink.

All modern printers are "not half bad" for photos so if you're on a budget, just find out which printer's ink gives the best cost per A4 photo page. Unless you go for high-end photo printers, just ignore all the manufacturer's claims about speed, quality, features, blah, blah. They just want you hooked on their ink.

Also recycled cartridges are worth considering but you need to find decent quality for photos.

Not sure how much lab printing is where you are but when considering the cost of ink, paper, and fiddling around, the lab beats home printing without a second thought.

I agree the printers are pennies compared to the cost of ink
Kodak are supposed to be around the cheapest to run I have a had a canon Pixma 600 for a few years now and buy online recycled tanks that work fine for me I get all 5 chipped tanks for £19.99
I would like the Canon A3 9500 but over £100 for a refill is too steep for me

Only if you use all colours equally as they put 5 inks in one cartridge (including a white coating for the paper). This means you throw out ink you have not used and pay more to replace a single colour than other manufacturers who use one cartridge per colour.

With printer prices reduced in the sales it can be cheaper to buy a new printer (with a full set of ink) than to purchase replacement ink for an existing device.

Whilst this business model can seem strange it is no different to the mobile phone companies claiming to give you a free phone but recouping the cost in the contract fees.

There are basically two types of ink jet printer engine, thermal and piezo. Epson use the piezo method where a voltage is modified to force the ink on to the paper and all the other manufacturers use the thermal method where a heater is used to get the ink onto the paper.

All Epson printers will achieve the same print resolution (5760 dpi) when using Epson ink and paper whilst other manufacturers claim up to (9600 dpi) when using their paper and ink. The other differences will be in the number of colours each printer can create. Obviously a print engine using only 4 colours will be capable of fewer colours than a 6 colour print engine.

From my experience and people I have spoken to you are best to look at either a Canon or Epson device but make sure they are using single cartridges for each colour (some of the Canon printers have a single cartridge for all colours).